Enoch 77:3 — Are the sun and moon the same size? Do eclipses confirm it?

1. The claim

Enoch chapter 77:3 — is he saying the moon and sun are the same size? The eclipses appear to confirm this.

The claim The Book of Enoch says the two great luminaries are equal in size (or “dimensions”). Because the moon can cover the sun in a total solar eclipse, they must actually be the same size — and Enoch was right where modern astronomy is wrong.

That pairing circulates on Facebook, Quora, and YouTube, often next to a flat-earth or “local sun and moon” model. It usually quotes Richard Laurence’s English, which numbers the verse 77:3.

2. Which verse is “Enoch 77:3”?

Fact English editions of 1 Enoch do not share one chapter scheme. “77:3” in Laurence is not “77:3” in R. H. Charles (the text in BibleScribe).

And the fourth quarter, named the north, is divided into three parts: the first of them is for the dwelling of men: and the second contains seas of water, and the abysses and forests and rivers, and darkness and clouds; and the third part contains the garden of righteousness. 1 Enoch 77:3 · R. H. Charles, via BibleScribe

Numbering If someone says “Enoch 77:3” and means the sun and moon, they are using Laurence (or a site that copies him: book-ofenoch.com, qbible’s Laurence column, older reprints). If they open Charles or BibleScribe to chapter 77, they will not find that claim.

3. What the luminaries text actually says

The text 1 Enoch’s Astronomical Book (chapters 72–82 in Charles) does say the two luminaries are equal in size. It says it twice. It also says the sun is seven times brighter, and that the moon’s light is transferred to her from the sun.

These are the two great luminaries: their circumference is like the circumference of the heaven, and the size of the circumference of both is alike. 1 Enoch 78:3 · Charles / BibleScribe · = Laurence 77:3

These are the two great luminaries, whose orbs are as the orbs of heaven; and the dimensions of both are equal. 1 Enoch 77:3 · Richard Laurence

As he rises, so he sets and decreases not, and rests not, but runs day and night, and his light is sevenfold brighter than that of the moon; but as regards size they are both equal. 1 Enoch 72:37 · Charles / BibleScribe

In the circumference of the sun there are seven portions of light which are added to it more than to the moon, and in definite measures it is transferred till the seventh portion of the sun is exhausted. 1 Enoch 78:4 · Charles / BibleScribe

Translation A few English paraphrases recast 78:3 as “the light of both is extended for the same purpose” (e.g. John Baty, sometimes repeated on social media). That is not how Charles, Laurence, or the usual scholarly line (Nickelsburg / VanderKam: “the size of both is alike”) read the Ge’ez. The equal-size wording is the mainstream English.

“Circumference like the circumference of the heaven” is the harder phrase. Taken as apparent discs in the sky, it fits what anyone can see: two round lights of similar angular width. Taken as physical bodies as large as the vault of heaven, it is a different claim than “two small equal lamps over a flat earth,” and it is not what an eclipse measures.

4. Genesis and the two great lights

And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. Genesis 1:16

Genesis calls both “great lights,” then immediately ranks them: greater to rule the day, lesser to rule the night. It does not give diameters. 1 Enoch is widely read as expanding that pair — same size, different brightness — inside a Second Temple calendar-and-portals cosmology.

• Genesis 1:14–18 — lights in the firmament for signs, seasons, days, and years; to give light on the earth.
• Psalm 136:7–9 — great lights; the sun to rule by day, the moon and stars by night.
• 1 Corinthians 15:41 — “There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars.”

The canon the Protestant church reads as Scripture ranks the two lights by office and glory. It never says they have the same physical size. Enoch is doing something extra, in another book.

5. Do eclipses confirm they are the same size?

What an eclipse shows A total solar eclipse shows that, from Earth, right now, the moon and the sun have nearly the same angular size — they cover about half a degree of sky. That is how big they look, not how big they are.

Why eclipses do not prove equal physical size

• Annular eclipses (“ring of fire”). When the moon is farther from Earth (near apogee), it is too small in the sky to cover the sun. A bright ring remains. If the two bodies were the same physical size at the same distance, you would not get both perfect totals and leftover rings. Their apparent sizes are only approximately equal, and they change.
• Total vs. partial path. The moon’s full shadow on Earth is a narrow track (the umbra), typically on the order of a hundred miles across. That is the geometry of a smaller, nearer body in front of a much larger, farther one.
• Lunar eclipses. Earth’s shadow on the moon is round and much wider than the moon. Earth is the large body in the middle; the moon is the small one passing through that shadow. That does not fit two equal local discs of heaven-sized circumference.
• The match is temporary. The moon is slowly receding. In the deep past, totals were easier; in the far future, only annular eclipses will remain. A designed “same size” identity would not drift.

So: eclipses do confirm that the two discs look almost the same size from the ground. They do not confirm that the bodies are the same size. The modern numbers (sun ~864,000 miles across, moon ~2,160; sun ~93 million miles away, moon ~239,000) are the ordinary explanation of the same observation.

If 1 Enoch 78:3 is read as “they look the same size in the sky,” eclipses agree. If it is read as “they are physically equal bodies,” eclipses are not the proof.

6. The rest of Enoch’s sky in the same chapters

The equal-size line sits inside a full model. Isolating 77:3 / 78:3 from that model makes the verse sound like a modern astronomy footnote. The surrounding verses do not.

• 72:2–5 — the sun rises through eastern portals and sets through western ones; a wind-driven chariot; after setting it returns through the north to reach the east again.
• 72:3, 75:6 — six portals east and six west, used by both sun and moon; twelve portals at the ends of the earth.
• 72:32 — the year is exactly 364 days.
• 73–74, 78:6–16 — the moon’s phases are fourteen or fifteen “parts” of light; some months 29 days, some 30; she wanes until her circumference is “empty, void of light” (78:14).
• 78:10–11 — Uriel shows “when light is transferred to the moon… by the sun.” Enoch’s moon is not a twin fire. She receives light.
• 78:17 — “there is nothing else in her save her light.”
• 82:8 — sun, moon, and stars revolve in circular chariots.

That is a Second Temple Jewish Book of the Luminaries: portals, a 364-day calendar, portions of light, angelic law (Uriel). It is not a laboratory measurement of diameter. 2 Enoch (Slavonic, a different book) is milder: the visionary “measured their goings and compared their light, and saw that the sun’s light is greater than the moon’s” (Secrets of Enoch 11:2, BibleScribe) — light, not size.

7. What 1 Enoch is

• A Jewish work assembled in the Second Temple period. The Astronomical Book (72–82) is often dated among the earlier layers (commonly placed in the third century BC or earlier).
• The complete book survives in Ge’ez (Ethiopic). Aramaic fragments were found at Qumran (Dead Sea Scrolls). Some Greek survives.
• It is canonical in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. It is not in the Jewish Tanakh, nor in the Protestant or Roman Catholic canons.
• Jude quotes it: “And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these…” (Jude 14–15, echoing 1 Enoch 1:9). A New Testament citation is not the same as the whole book being treated as Scripture by every church.

So the question “is Enoch right about the sun and moon?” is first a question about what kind of book this is — revealed cosmology, ancient astronomy, calendar polemic, or some mix — and only then a question about eclipses.

8. Key texts and sources

Short answer: yes, the Book of the Luminaries says the sun and moon are equal in size (Laurence 77:3 / Charles 78:3 and 72:37). No, Charles 77:3 is not that verse. Eclipses confirm the look — two discs of nearly the same width in the sky — not that the bodies themselves are the same size.